Two Stores on Bleecker Street Feature Psychedelic Aminita Mushrooms in Their Windows: Conspiracy or Coincidence?

August 10, 2011

The red toadstools in the window of Mulberry, a high-end handbag store, scream, “Feed Your Head!”

Improbably, two stores on the same block of Bleecker between West 11th and Perry have chosen as their window motif towering red-capped mushrooms. How pretty! But not just any mushrooms.

The windows of both Mulberry and Jack Spade — a seller of men’s sport clothes, books, bicycles, and other miscellany at gargantuan prices — have scary-big replicas of the mushroom Amanita muscaria, which Wikipedia calls “the quintessential red toadstool.”

Native to the forests of the American Northeast, the fruiting fungus has hallucinogenic properties, and if you ate even a small amount of those specimens in the window, you’d really be tripping, man!

Is a psychedelic revival in store for the super-rich who frequent the establishments along this strip? Stay tuned to Fork in the Road and find out, brother.

Is haberdasher Spade passed out in the rear of his store? Could he maybe donate some of the mushroom to Magnolia across the street to incorporate into their cupcakes? Even I might eat one then.

While waiting for the answer to these questions, why not check out the Jefferson Airplane song that features hallucinogenic mushrooms?

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“And you’ve just had some kind of mushroom, and your mind is moving along.”